


CAIUS AUFIDIUS MINICIANUS

by hoc_voluerunt



Series: SPQR [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ancient Greece & Rome, Alternate Universe - Ancient Rome, Alternate Universe - Historical, Ancient Rome, Animal Sacrifice, Blackmail, Case Fic, Gen, Heist, Historical References, Pre-Slash, Story: The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-08 14:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1133759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoc_voluerunt/pseuds/hoc_voluerunt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Emperor Galba approaches Rome, there are more matters than imperial politics to be feared. A blackmailer is making his way through the ranks not only of the senate, but of the populace too, and Sollemnis may have given Celatus the perfect opportunity to bring him down. But with so many secrets rushing about beneath the surface, there may be some that hit closer to home, and can be used to devastating effect. For power can be a terrible thing; and secrets -- despite the attempts of army surgeons -- must always come to light in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	CAIUS AUFIDIUS MINICIANUS

**Author's Note:**

> Latin translations in mouseover text, or in [this post](http://hoc-voluerunt.livejournal.com/39859.html).

            “How can we have an _emperor_ who hasn’t even been in Rome yet?”

            Vannus snatched an urchin’s hand away from the money on his belt and hurried on. “When there aren’t any other options?” he suggested with a cynical shrug.

            “It’s been over a _month!”_

            “I _know,_ Celatus,” Vannus grumbled, “I have been following the reports.”

            Celatus glared at the street ahead of them and snarled his wordless distaste. “You see Vannus,” he said, “this is precisely why I don’t bother with knowledge of politics. It makes no sense, and in the end, it hardly affects the populace for more than a few weeks. The whole of Rome is practically back to normal, except a few worried senators and imperial freedman trying to hang on to their jobs.”

            Vannus rolled his eyes and strode on. “I imagine the people who had their homes robbed or their lives lost in the chaos would disagree – _ah,_ now there’s a fine one!” He veered off through the _forum boarium_ towards a healthy-looking bull, and was followed by a reluctant and complaining Celatus.

            “I don’t see why we have to have all this fuss over _dinner,”_ he drawled, as Vannus inspected the animal.

            “Because we missed the ceremonies on the kalends because of _your_ case with those bloody Greek translators,” Vannus replied calmly from where he crouched, “and we’re not missing the feast day too. You and I both have endured far too much at the hands of Fortuna to risk getting on Jupiter’s bad side.”

            He stood, but as he did, a passing man collided with his shoulder. Vannus winced, and turned to glimpse the man’s face – pale, red-haired, and pointed – before the stranger spoke, an undertone audible only to Vannus’ ears.

            “Enjoy your time in the arena?”

            The man walked off, dissolving into the crowd, but Vannus froze in place, and only stared after where he had disappeared. Behind him, Celatus was still complaining, and it took until the cattle merchant called out for Vannus’ attention for the patrician to notice his distraction.

            “Vannus?” he snapped, then registered his face – he glanced over to where Vannus was still staring, and stepped closer, spoke softer this time. “Vannus, what is it?”

            “Nothing…” Vannus’ voice was absent, his gaze still fixed on the crowd. “It’s nothing.”

_“Vannus –”_

            “Sir?” interrupted the merchant’s voice. “It’s five denarii for the whole bull, if you’re looking for it.”

            Vannus gasped, and turned back in haste to the business at hand. “Ah, no,” he said, “we’re only looking for a few cuts…”

            He paid twenty asses for the sizeable chunks of beef and a vial of blood from the slaughtered animal, and ignored Celatus’ sharp and concerned stares.

            “So,” he chatted as they made their way back across the Aventine, “have you any cases on hand to give you an excuse to leave the banquet tonight?”

            Celatus’ mouth screwed up in distaste. _“No,”_ he said, as if the very fact irked him to the core. “Will Statius be there?”

            “Hey, he’s a good man!” Vannus chided. “After all, he put up with _you_ until I came along, didn’t he? And he’s a better doctor than most in this city.”

            “Well, that much is obvious,” Celatus retorted. “There’s no way _you_ would consort with him if he wasn’t.”

            Vannus’ brow rose, and his chin jutted up with it, as he nodded in a wild gesture of sarcastic surprise. “Was that – was that a _compliment_ I heard?”

            Celatus looked as if he’d swallowed something rotten. “Merely a statement of fact,” he bit out, but Vannus was having none of it.

            “It _was!”_ he cried, and laughed aloud. “Jupiter, Juno and Minerva above, we’ll make a true man out of you yet!” He glanced up at Celatus, and restrained himself before he gave the man an excuse to spit when his arms were occupied by packets of meat. He cleared his throat. “In any case,” he continued, in a more conversational tone, “Mykale will be there, as will Laevinus, so you’ll have people to talk to. And Menna, too, should make it – I know you enjoy her company.”

            “You’re thinking of marrying her,” Celatus intoned, and caused Vannus to nearly drop one of his burdens as he spluttered in protest. “Don’t try to deny it, it would be an admirable match,” Celatus said with a roll of his eyes. “You’re an unmarried ex-legionary, you’re both doctors, she’s divorced and childless, it all seems perfectly reasonable.”

            The twist in his mouth, however, seemed to have little to do with _reason._

            “That’s all well and good,” Vannus conceded, “but that doesn’t mean I have to _marry her.”_

            “But you _are_ considering it.”

            Vannus heaved out a long and put-upon sigh. “Celatus, you are not the person I want to speak to about this.”

            “What?” Celatus looked outraged. “I am your most constant companion, we live and work together –”

            “I don’t recall you spending many days beside my surgeries, no…”

            “It would be _most_ retrograde to – both my business _and_ my ordinary life if you were to run off to the Caelian and start a _family.”_

            Vannus scoffed. _“Run off?”_ he repeated. “Mithras, Celatus, even if I _were_ to get married to her, it’s not as if I’d be running away from you. Jupiter knows this city is hardly big enough for you as it is, I’d have no choice but to keep in touch with you, even if I wanted one!”

            Celatus, however, still curled his lips in distaste, so Vannus sighed, and discarded the subject. It was hardly relevant anyway – he’d not exactly begun making plans for proposals. True, Menna was a possibility and an opportunity, as Celatus had said; but she was a very good friend – that was all. In any case, in so turbulent and uncertain times as they were pushing through, he was wary about considering serious plans such as _marriage_ in the first place. Better to wait, he believed, where he could find himself someplace safer, and stay with Celatus while he did.

 

            The feast – perhaps predictably – ended with Vannus head-splittingly drunk. He was all right when they farewelled their guests and turned from the courtyard (the only space in the building big enough to house the party), but then Celatus had suggested more wine, and a continuation of celebrations upstairs. He remembered making offerings to the lares in his room while Celatus scoffed, and playing games in the meagre starlight in the main room; but much of the night was unremembered, and his vision was a blur as well as his mind when he woke, sprawled on the floor with one of Celatus’ feet in his back where it hung over the edge of the couch.

            What was most upsetting about the morning, however, was the sound of Sollemnis’ smooth and superior voice above them.

            “Oh my,” he drawled, with a nod at the embers that had died down in the hearth. “We wouldn’t want your legate friend to see you being so careless with fires, not after all our other… mishaps.”

            Celatus groaned, long, loud and abrasive, from the couch above him, and Vannus heartily agreed with the sentiment.

 

            Celatus massaged his temples, and glared from beneath drooping lids at his brother, sitting across the hearth.

            “I have an assignment for you, Amulius,” Sollemnis began, but Celatus overrode him.

            “And I have a _hangover,”_ he snapped. “Can’t this wait?”

            Sollemnis’ expression was one of infinite judgement. “I’m afraid it cannot.”

            Across the room, Vannus stamped up the stairs with two buckets of cold water in his hands. He spared only a glance for the warring brothers before he set down one bucket beside Celatus’ chair and one on the low table by the couch. Celatus frowned at the innocent object.

            “And what is _this?”_ he seethed, and directed his glare now at Vannus, who shrugged.

            “Best cure for a hangover that I’ve ever seen,” he said, and sat on the edge of the couch. “And it works in seconds.”

            “And _what is it?”_

            Vannus’ mouth went lopsided in a half a grin, before he sat forward, took a long breath, and plunged his head into the water before him. To the twin startled, appalled stares of the Cornelii across from him, Vannus remained submerged for a few moments, then reappeared in a great rush and splash of water, gasping and dripping. He blinked the water from his eyes, and shook it from his short-cropped hair, then ran his hands over his face and head with a wide-mouthed, wide-eyed expression of shock. After another few gasps, and a rousing shudder, and he shook his head again – spraying droplets everywhere – and met the Cornelii’s gazes with brow raised in defiant triumph.

            “Well, it works.”

            Celatus curled his lip at his friend, then turned back to his brother.

 _“What is it,_ then?” he sneered.

            Sollemnis sighed enormously, so that it shifted his whole bulk. “The lady Epidia Bruttia,” he said – “do you know her?”

            “Not personally, no,” Celatus all but spat.

            “She’s the wife of a very wealthy senator,” explained Sollemnis, “Lucius Bruttius Crispinus. And she’s being blackmailed.”

            Celatus narrowed his eyes at his brother across the hearth. “You don’t need me to find out by whom,” he said, in a voice as low as a threat, “you have enough power to do that on your own. No, you know who’s doing it – and it’s someone very special…”

            Sollemnis’ mouth turned down in contempt. “I’m sure you can reason as to whom.”

            With a flattening, blank expression, Celatus sat up in his chair and stared, no longer with the same animosity as before.

            “Minicianus,” he said, like a proclamation. Sollemnis inclined his head.

            “I know you have kept tabs on him,” he said slowly, “and I know that you would leap at the opportunity to engage him in conflict. So… here I am.” The senator smiled with eel-like beneficence. “Do try to gain enough for prosecution.”

            Silence reigned for a long moment – even Vannus had slowed in wiping his face and hair with his hands in order to watch the motionless contest.

            “Have you any more to tell me?” Celatus finally intoned, still frozen in place.

            “Nothing you won’t find on your own.”

            One, small nod was all the recognition Celatus gave.

            “Get out,” he said – but as Sollemnis stood with a great heave and turned to the doorway, his brother murmured one more thing: “And thank you…”

            Sollemnis’ mouth went flat, but he did not speak again as he left the room.

            Vannus, hesitant, sat where he was, and glanced between Celatus and the door to the stairwell, where Sollemnis’ footsteps were gradually receding.

            “… Minicianus?” he repeated, once his eyes came to rest on Celatus; but he received not the answers he wanted.

            “We have work to do.”

 

            ‘Work’, apparently, consisted of a visit to the Bruttius household near the forum. It was a sprawling building an easy walk from the senate house, with high, blank walls on the street-facing sides and narrow alleyways beside and behind it to facilitate the servants’ work. When Celatus and Vannus were finally admitted, they were led through a short hallway to an extravagant atrium, bedecked with styled plants and ornaments, and statues from ancestry and myth. The Bruttii themselves – when they joined their guests in the atrium, instead of the main office – were an entirely Roman family, all olive-skinned and dark-eyed, with grand noses over which to sneer at foreigners and the poor. Vannus was met with particular contempt, as Crispinus owned a family of British slaves himself, on conspicuous display in one corner of the courtyard; but it was Celatus’ haughty status which had got them through the doors, and so it was to him that Vannus gave a measured precedence.

            “I wish to speak to your wife,” the patrician commanded, and his voice echoed around the spacious atrium like an emperor’s at court. “Alone.”

            “Nothing happens with my wife but I hear of it,” Crispinus sneered. Behind him, Epidia, tall and thin, wrung her hands in silence.

            “Nevertheless,” Celatus countered – “you shan’t hear of this.”

            “She’s _my wife,”_ Crispinus insisted. “Unless you’re willing to speak to me, you won’t be speaking to her. Helios!”

            A Bithynian slave hurried over from some unseen corridor, his collar rattling faintly as he ran.

            “Escort these two _fellows_ out of my house.”

            As the slave Helios approached, however, Celatus’ neck stiffened, and he raised a hand towards the man in an obvious command to halt. He kept his eyes on Crispinus, meeting bitter anger with an expressionless face.

            “I think we can show ourselves out,” he said, and held Crispinus’ eye a moment longer; then he turned, and swept back towards the front doors. Vannus lingered just long enough to cast upon Crispinus a withering glare, then to lend Epidia a kinder glance, before he marched out after Celatus.

            “Well, that was a complete failure,” Vannus sighed, as he clasped his hands behind his back and glanced up and down the street ahead. One side of Celatus’ mouth turned up in defiant glee.

            “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he mused. He pivoted on his heel to face the imposing walls of the house again, and took two steps back, examining and assessing. “I think Crispinus told us quite enough to be getting on with…”

            Vannus – who had not turned – frowned at Celatus’ obvious inspiration. “I’ve presumably missed something,” he said with a cynical, raised brow. Vannus met the expression with a smirk.

            “Did you notice the name of his slave?”

            “Helios, yes.”

            “Do you recognise it?”

            Vannus’ frown only contracted further. “He was… one of Nero’s freedmen,” he said, as if the knowledge were a surprise to him.

            “No doubt the man is currently frantic to escape Rome before Galba arrives to execute him by mistake,” Celatus shrugged. “But his namesake… Our Bruttius Crispinus seems to have been a loyal supporter of Nero. His lavish house would indicate a certain sympathy in taste, and every slave we saw carried a weapon of some sort. No self-respecting senator would leave himself and his family open to attack like that in normal circumstances, so clearly they’re expecting trouble, and want their slaves to be ready to defend them should the need arise. All reports say that Galba is approaching Rome – no doubt the supporters of his imperial rival fear the repercussions of their loyalty.” Celatus ended the speech with a wide and satisfied, tight-lipped smile. “I always have said that politics isn’t worth it.”

            Having shifted on his feet while Celatus spoke, Vannus’ widened stance would have struck any passer-by as readiness for an attack; his crossed arms, however, told more of his anger. “All right,” he growled, “so they supported Nero. Do you want to tell me how that’s going to help us stop this Minicianus fellow from blackmailing Epidia?”

            Celatus lowered his gaze from the house to Vannus with a tilt of his head, and set off at a measured pace down the street.

            “It should help us to acquire a personal meeting with Epidia, at least.”

 

            Celatus’ plan took some days to instigate, though it was sped up considerably by events outside of Rome. After much surveillance of the building, they confirmed where Epidia spent her time, and who lived in the household besides Crispinus and his wife: Crispinus’ ill-respected brother, for one, and Epidia’s two young daughters. With the help of his paid urchins, and one or two of Sollemnis’ slaves, they had planned to open up the Bruttii household and distract Crispinus with rumour and threat; when, however, the news began to spread that Clodius Macer had been assassinated, and Sabinus was making claims to the throne, no threats had to be invented, but Celatus’ helpers simply ran to the Bruttii’s door and beat on it, crying for him to beware. It wasn’t long until Crispinus sent his slaves out to quiet the rabble, then followed himself, and went out into the street in search of confirmation and advice, accompanied by a whole group of armed men.

            As he passed, then, Celatus – disguised in bared feet and Vannus’ borrowed clothes – approached Crispinus with cries of entreaty: he claimed to be an ex-slave of Nero’s seeking obscure sanctuary before Galba reached Rome “to butcher us all”. And, as Crispinus snapped and hurried off, Vannus edged past the crowd and through the front doors of the house. He blended well with the British slaves, who glanced at him askance but let him be with hidden smiles, and proceeded through the house on steady legs. Crispinus’ brother approached him in the atrium with demands and accusations, but he was easily despatched with a blow to the head and, as Celatus had foretold, Crispinus’ slaves paid his insensate body no heed. Vannus’ only task, then, was to smile at Epidia’s daughters as they peered around a door out at the noise, and to march his way back to Epidia’s quarters.

            “Epidia Bruttia,” he said in announcement as he entered the room in which she sat weaving. She startled, and turned in her chair to stare at him; but he smiled, and held out his hands palms-up in surrender, and said: “My name is Caelius Piso. I’m here to help you.”

 

            “It started three months ago,” said Epidia, with a sniffle. One of her daughters, the elder, clung to her knee, with her mother’s hand upon her head; the younger, a mere four years old, was being held in Vannus’ lap. “It isn’t much, really – just a few letters I once wrote, when I was young, to a boy I wanted to marry. I was only fourteen, you can’t blame me…”

            Vannus looked kindly across at her. “No,” he said, “I really couldn’t.”

            She met his acceptance with a watery smile. “But my husband, you know…” She sighed. “Well, you’ve met him, haven’t you? He’d divorce me at best; at worst…” She glanced down at her daughters, and her hand tightened for just a moment in the elder’s hair. “I cannot let those letters come to light.”

            “We understand,” said Vannus, as he bounced the little girl on his knee and she clung to his shoulder with a gleeful laugh. “And we only want to help.”

            “Whatever you can do, please,” Epidia entreated. “I’ve already exhausted my dowry in paying him, but his demands grow more and more. I can’t keep it up without Lucius noticing.”

            “How many letters were there?” The question was of business, but Vannus asked it with softness.

            “Just three,” said Epidia, “written long ago, when Nero had just acceded. I don’t know where he’s keeping them, but the hand is still recognisably mine, and my name is all over them. If Lucius sees them, or hears of them, he won’t hesitate to believe them. That’s the kind of man he is: too quick to act.”

            “And how often does your prosecutor require payment?”

            Epidia swallowed. “Every month,” she said, “on the ides. I told you, I used up my dowry with the last payment, a week ago. In another month…”

            “We’ll do everything we can, my lady,” Vannus soothed. At that moment, there came a knock from the street-side door, in a distinctive rhythm of raps. Vannus glanced over his shoulder towards the front of the house, then picked up the little girl in his lap and set her down on the floor. “Your husband is returning,” he said. “Can you show me the way to the servants’ gate?”

            Epidia called in one of the slaves to show him out, and entrusted her children back to another as she returned to her weaving. As Vannus left, however, she spared for him one final, entreating glance, and a few more words:

            “Please do what you can, Piso,” she called after him – “if not for me, then for my daughters’ sake.”

            He nodded his promise, and hurried from the room.

 

            Celatus fell into step with Vannus the moment he left the house, still in disguise. It took Vannus a moment and a double-take to recognise him, but the voice that came from his distinctive mouth was unmistakeable in its timbre and command.

            “Tell me everything.”

            Their gait was loping and quick, and took them away from the Bruttii household fast.

            “Three letters she wrote when she was fourteen,” Vannus growled under his breath, glancing about them. “He requires payment every ides, and she’s exhausted her dowry. If Crispinus finds out, not only is her life at stake –”

            “So too are the lives of her daughters,” Celatus finished. “Crispinus is not a merciful man.”

            Vannus took a steely breath. “We need to stop this,” he said. _“Before_ the ides of October.”

            Celatus hummed, but said nothing to elaborate.

 

            Without words of explanation, since Vannus had snuck into the Bruttii’s house, Celatus spent his days out in the city and surrounds. On the rare occasions on which Vannus had run into him – in the very early morning or very late night, or, once, in the middle of a day in which Vannus had not been called to Seia’s aid, and had decided to spend the day testing out the equipment and grounds at the _Thermae Agrippae_ – the patrician had utterly refused to divulge anything of his investigations; until finally, nearly fifteen days after the ides of September, he was to be found in CCXXIB, wielding a large knife with which he furiously attacked a large slab of pork for their dinner.

            “Want a hand with that?” Vannus asked with a raised brow as he dropped his satchel full of surgical tools large and small on the floor and passed through to their kitchen space. Celatus growled.

 _“Caius – Aufidius – Minicianus,”_ he said, and punctuated each word with a particularly ferocious chop – “is the most utterly vile and detestable being in all of Rome.”

            “That is, until our Emperor Galba arrives,” Vannus quipped, but Celatus’ eyes flashed grey as he glared.

            “Have you ever seen a snake, Vannus?” he asked, as if the question were of absolute importance. Vannus frowned at him as he pulled out a small array of vegetables.

 _“Why?”_ he drawled, instead of answering.

            “Oh, you know,” Celatus shrugged, “their flat, cruel faces, their glittering eyes, their smooth and slithering ways…” His shoulders had tensed, and his mouth twisted as he sucked on his lips. Vannus raised a brow, and picked up a knife.

            “That’s what Minicianus is like?”

            Celatus’ absent, pursed expression turned utterly focused and sour.

            “I have spent recent days observing his movements,” he glowered, as he returned to his mincing of meat. “I already knew of the man and his business, of course, but hardly so intimately as I have now had the displeasure to reveal. Not only is he well-acquainted personally with both the senate house and the court, but he keeps himself well-liked by the noble classes with his knowledge of Greek literature and art, while his slaves and freedmen consort with those of his fellows. These people also keep him apprised of situations in the less vaulted communities.”

            “And he uses them to gain compromising information against his victims?” Vannus remarked. His insides had turned as sour as Celatus’ face.

            “All terrifically indebted to him, of course,” Celatus said to their dinner, “and none fully aware of the things they report or what their patron and master does with them. Minicianus rules over his little, insidious kingdom like a Tarquin of old.”

            “And Epidia?” Vannus added. “Did you find any way to remove her from his influence?”

            If Celatus’ expression had been sour before, it now became rotten and foul.

            “I managed to infiltrate his system of informants,” he muttered. “I have walked the halls of his house and spoken to his slaves and meagre family. I have followed him in his day’s work to the forum and the scattered court and seen him intimidate and flatter and charm with his many clients and associates. And I have found _no way_ – no way by all Minerva’s skills – to free Epidia from his greedy scheme.” He set down his knife with a harsh, expelled breath and leaned his hands on the table. “If she does not pay, he reveals the letters to Crispinus. If she tries to flee, he will find her within days, and reveal the letters to Crispinus. If she tries to threaten him, he reveals the letters. If she pays less than he asks, he reveals the letters. If she does anything that does not comply with his very specific demands of timing and amount, _he reveals the letters._ There is no way to lawfully and peacefully remove this threat.”

            He fumed still down at the table, and Vannus, though he had stared throughout the growled tirade, went back to his work on the vegetables.

            “These, however,” he added slowly, as he dropped handfuls of cabbage and leek into a pot, “are hardly peaceful times.”

            Celatus did not look at him.

            “I have arranged for him to meet us,” he said instead. “The time and place for that meeting is up to him.”

            “If we overstep our boundaries on Epidia’s behalf…” Vannus began, and Celatus finished the thought.

            “He reveals the letters.”

            Vannus clenched and unclenched his hands between pot and tabletop.

            “We must stop him.”

            Celatus did not look at him.

            “I am _trying.”_

 

            Celatus slept that night, and long into the next morning, his exertions after Minicianus having worn him out over so many days. He seemed to have given up on any more active investigations, and spent his time in his room, or silent and sulking while Vannus worked or ate; and he was lucky, then, to have been aware when, on the very kalends, as Vannus finished his lunch, a young slave came to them with fearful eyes and a message for the tousle-haired, toga-less Celatus.

 _“ Dominus _says,” he reported, “that he will meet you here, in the sixth hour after midday.”

            Before the young man had arrived, Celatus had been made of furious eyes and hunched shoulders; but after the message was given, he very slowly straightened his spine, and his shoulders pushed back, and his eyes flashed with steel as he stood.

            “Very well,” was all that he said, and the slave scurried from their rooms. Vannus watched the man go, then turned his gaze on Celatus’ still and statue-like form.

            “Minicianus?” he said, although the questioning tone was unnecessary: there was only one message which could make Celatus look like that.

            “I need to…” Celatus murmured, “prepare.”

            He was fully dressed in moments, and disappeared off into the city without another word.

 

            During the afternoon, Vannus responded to a slave sent for him from Menna, which asked him to help with a particularly difficult childbirth (though with no idea what to do there, he did little more than take orders from the more experienced midwife, who complained repeatedly about having to bring a man into the business). So it was that he returned to the via Pistoris quite covered in blood and other fluids, as well as the weight of both life and death upon his shoulders. He stripped down in the courtyard and rinsed off what he could before he had to go up and see Celatus’ foul mood again; however, it turned out that Celatus was not yet home, when the patrician himself marched glowering through the doorway to the street, and turned his glare upon Vannus’ dripping form. His nose wrinkled.

            “Menna was that desperate, was she?” he spat. Vannus stared up at him from where he crouched beside a large bucket, rinsing his arms.

            “It was a complicated case,” he replied, and though he tried to keep the accusation from his voice in the shadow of Celatus’ own _complicated case,_ he had not the patience to withstand the man’s derision after all he had seen in the preceding hours. Celatus merely scoffed at him, but did not move on.

            “Well, clean yourself up then,” he growled. “We have rather an important meeting soon, and I wouldn’t want you stinking of some woman’s expulsions when we make dealings with a blackmailer.”

            Vannus twisted on his bare feet, and stood to face Celatus head-on. _“Some woman,”_ he said precisely, “is _dead.”_

            Celatus, however, merely rolled his eyes. “And what’s that to me? She was obviously poor, probably not even married – Minicianus is on a somewhat higher level, wouldn’t you say?”

            He swept past and into the house, towards the stairs, and left Vannus naked, wet, and furious, with his hands clenched at his sides. He washed off the last of the debris on his arms and neck, and strode inside with his tunic and belt over his arm. In their rooms, he found Celatus sitting in his chair, coiled up except for one extended arm, the fingers of which tapped erratically on the furniture.

            “Show some respect,” Vannus growled as he walked to his room, “or I’ll leave you to deal with your _blackmailer_ on your own.”

            “You wouldn’t,” Celatus called after him, though he did not turn or look up. “Your sense of justice is far too strong for that.”

            Vannus bit his tongue and ignored him as he changed.

            “Besides,” Celatus added, “perhaps that would be for the best. No doubt a vaulted man like Minicianus will deal worse with me when there’s a mere doctor involved in negotiations.”

            Vannus, in only his underwear now, marched back into the main room, and promptly backhanded Celatus across the cheek. Celatus’ head whipped around with the force of the blow, and his eyes and mouth hung blank and open in surprise.

            “Soldier,” Vannus corrected, with a pointed finger in Celatus’ face. He dropped his hand, and nearly grimaced. “Do not try this again, Celatus.”

            Celatus said nothing – did not even move – so Vannus left him and returned to his room to finish dressing. It was an insult he had not heard since the very first few weeks of their acquaintance; they were words he only ever heard now in jest. To have them flung in his face like that, cruel and intended to be so, was outrageous and not a little worrying.

            There was still some little time until Minicianus was meant to meet them, so Vannus gathered together some scraps of food which he heated for his dinner. He did not bother to offer Celatus a share.

 

            The sun was red and descending, the sixth hour well in progress, before there sounded a step on the stair and a ponderous knock on their living room door. Vannus paused where he sat, sharpening his dagger, and Celatus, though he had not even been moving, seemed still to freeze in his seat. Then, slowly, he unfolded his limbs and sat imperious and straight, and called out to their visitor:

            “Enter.”

 

            Caius Aufidius Minicianus was a man perhaps nearing fifty, olive-skinned and smiling. His chin was round, his neck and belly thick, and he was followed by a thin and scarred German with an iron collar on his neck, who kept his mouth resolutely shut.

            “Amulius Cornelius Celatus?” he said as he entered, a parody of a greeting – it was obvious that he knew precisely whom he had met. His eyes flickered up to where Vannus stood in the doorway to his room – dagger abandoned – and his smile grew broader. “And you must be the British doctor,” he added, and though it did not sound like a sneer, his eyes told otherwise. “You ought to know, Cornelius,” he continued, not taking his eyes from Vannus’ stiff-backed form, “that I intend to be fully frank with you here. And since the matter is one of such…” He blinked, and his eyes fell on Celatus – _“delicacy –_ perhaps it would be better if we spoke alone.”

            Celatus’ expression was unmoving, even as Minicianus’ smile simpered and shifted with his eyes. “No,” he bit out. “Piso is my colleague – he hears everything you say.”

            Minicianus’ eyebrows rose, but he shrugged – still smiling enough to set Vannus’ teeth on edge. Their visitor moved forward, to sit across from Celatus’ chair.

            “And your man, then?” Celatus said, the accusation ill-hidden, with a nod at Minicianus’ slave. “Can he be trusted?”

            “Tacitus,” Minicianus called to his slave, who stepped forward – “show them your tongue.”

            The man opened his mouth wide for Celatus, who did not move; he then turned his head for Vannus to see.

            His tongue had been cut out.

            Vannus’ eyes widened, and the slave shut his mouth as Minicianus smiled, with his eyes on Celatus.

            “He won’t be divulging anything,” he drawled, “if that’s what you’re worried about.”

            Celatus watched him, impassive, for a long moment, until he took a long and measured breath, and sat forward by a fraction, a new angle to his head.

            “You have been blackmailing Epidia Bruttia,” he said, in a plain and unemotional tone. “We have been contacted to deal with you.”

            “Bruttia, Bruttia…” Minicianus mused, with a little crease between his brows as his smile finally dropped into a mockery of contemplation. _“Ah,_ yes, the good Epidia!” The smile was back, and Vannus wanted to retch. “Those letters of hers, I’m sure she’s told you where they’re from?” Neither of his fellows moved, but he went on anyway. “Yes, quite – _sprightly,_ for a girl like her. Her husband, I imagine, wouldn’t take them in the innocent grace in which they were intended…”

            “Bruttia cannot afford the extortionate rates at which you are threatening her,” Celatus snapped. His mouth clicked shut after the words, and his took a short, almost invisible breath. When he went on, his words were more steady. “At what you have been charging, no doubt you have made a considerable sum. We must request that you cease your demands, and return the letters to the woman in question.”

            Minicianus’ brow rose high, and then his oily smile spread wide across his face.

            “I’m afraid that isn’t quite how I conduct my business, Cornelius,” he said. “Perhaps you have another idea you’d like to try?”

            Vannus could stay silent no longer. “How long do you intend to extort money from an innocent woman?” he barked, without a move to step forward or lower his arms from where they were crossed over his chest. Minicianus acted, for just a moment, as if he had not heard him; but then he followed Celatus’ eyes, and craned his neck around to see him.

            “For as long,” he said, slowly, “as I like.”

            “Then you will ruin her,” said Celatus. “Is that what you want? She cannot pay you if her husband murders her for a perceived slight!”

            Minicianus’ mouth turned down in cynicism. “There’s no need to let Bruttius Crispinus know,” he frowned. “Why should he do that?”

            Celatus froze, staring, and his eyes were wide and bright. He looked as if he were at a crossroads he had not anticipated, on a long journey he had not walked before. Eventually, his lips parted, and he spoke.

            “You know,” he growled, “precisely where Epidia will have to get her funds for you from now on.”

            Minicianus shrugged.

            “She could stop paying.”

            “And you would reveal the letters to Bruttius.”

_“Naturally.”_

            “And again she would be in danger.”

            “Then payment must be her only option.”

            Their hateful guest grinned, and Vannus’ fists clenched against his arms. Silence reigned, and Celatus was left staring again.

            “There is no chance of your returning the letters to Epidia,” he finally said, which caused Minicianus to pout.

            “Surely you don’t think so little of my acumen as a businessman,” he crooned.

            “You will not lower your price?”

            “Again, you rather seem to have misunderstood what I do…”

            All of a sudden, Celatus’ fingers tightened on the arms of his chair. “What do you stand to gain,” he cried, “from an innocent woman’s ruin?”

            Minicianus froze – not in horror, or suspense, or surprise, but a sudden and palpable recognition of _glee._

            “Great Jupiter,” he breathed: “you really _don’t_ know what you’re doing, do you?”

            Celatus sat in place, and swallowed, as Vannus glanced back and forth between the two seated men.

            “Should Epidia Bruttia miss her payment,” Minicianus jeered, as if he were talking to a child, “then I will reveal her secret. Whatever should happen as an entirely unintended consequence of my purely business-like actions – well. Let’s just say that some other of my clients will have somewhat more in the way of _motivation_ to comply.”

            He smiled like a shark.

            “Now, if you’ll excuse me –” he glanced back at Vannus – _“gentlemen;_ I have some few other appointments this evening that I should be quite sore to miss. And, well –” He patted the folds of his toga. “We wouldn’t want Bruttia’s correspondence to go astray.”

            He stood, and turned for the door, even as Celatus’ eyes grew wide and his cheeks pale, and he called out to the already-moving Vannus: _“Stop him!”_ Yet even as Vannus cut Minicianus off from the exit in a few strides, chair in hand, the man was unfazed. His slave had drawn a dagger from his belt, and turned it toward Celatus, while Minicianus looked Vannus up and down – from his short and ill-cropped hair, to his ready hands, to his bare and tensed feet – and cooed:

 _“ Ne causam missionis aperiamus amiculo, _eh Piso?”

            Vannus’ face fell. His lips parted, and his sternness dropped away. His hands and shoulders lost all of their fight, and the chair he wielded dropped to the floor with a _thunk_. His stance moved back, then his feet; and Minicianus could not have looked more pleased had the senate granted him the empire. He swept past Vannus’ surrender, and called over his shoulder as he left, his slave behind with dagger still out:

            “Good luck, Cornelius!”

            His footsteps faded, and he and his slave were gone. After a few moments, there drifted up the sound of his orders to his litter-bearers, and the tramp of their feet as they carried him away. Celatus stared, first at the door through which Minicianus had left, then at Vannus, who stood motionless beside it with his own eyes unfocused upon the room.

            “… Vannus?”

            His mouth shut, and he took a breath, and he looked up at Celatus with dark, blue eyes and said:

            “Do not follow this for answers.”

            Celatus frowned, and opened his mouth, but Vannus anticipated him, and overrode him before he could protest.

            “Do not make me beg.”

            The frown on Celatus’ face only deepened, but Vannus ignored him, and strode across to his room, and shut the door behind him in defence.

 

            There was nothing he could do. This was no simple threat from a ruffian or faceless enemy soldier, no tight spot he could wriggle out of with the right words and a warning or promise. He could hardly murder a senator on the basis of veiled intimidation, but nor could he risk the knowledge becoming public: to his friends, or colleagues, or associates; to Celatus.

            Vannus shut himself away in his room, and refused to come out until the morning. He left before it grew light, and did not see Celatus as he went.

 

            Their lives returned almost to as they had been before Minicianus’ visit. Celatus, in the wake of his failure to move their quarry from his path, threw himself wholly into his efforts to learn more of the man’s trade. Their only hope, now, was to fulfil Sollemnis’ original intent: to gather enough information and evidence to bring Minicianus to trial. There was no emperor, still, in the city, and the senators had grown arrogant in the absence of a court, and it seemed it would be easy to bring the case to its conclusion – if only there had been enough explicitly lawless with which to charge the man. As things were, his business was conducted in so secretive and threatening a manner that no jury or magistrate would ever have been convinced that he deserved punishment; and only then if they were not threatened or bribed into complacency.

            Yet still Celatus worked, disguised or by proxy or as himself in the shadows; only now he was a little more alone. When Vannus was not doing his duties for Seia, he distracted himself with dinners, drinks, and walks with friends – anything to avoid spending time with Celatus in CCXXIB. He had withdrawn, entirely, from the Minicianus case, and even where Celatus would have wanted his help, he refused to be even available to be asked.

            And so it was; until, on the nones, the news reached Rome of Galba’s imminent arrival.

 

            Vannus met up with Laevinus and Dido at the vigiles’ headquarters after splinting a man’s fingers at Seia’s shop, and caught them just as they left.

            “You off to watch the procession?” Laevinus asked with a grin, even as Dido scowled behind him.

            “Might as well,” Vannus nodded, returning his embrace. “Though you’re looking far too happy about it.”

            “You’d be happy too, if your income relied on the emperor’s coffers.” Laevinus nudged his arm as they set off, but Vannus only raised his brow.

            “I wouldn’t rest your hopes on Galba’s generosity,” he jibed. “Haven’t you heard the rumours? They say he won’t even pay the Praetorians their promised due.”

            “They killed off Sabinus for him,” Dido growled, “you’d think he’d have more sense.”

            But Laevinus just rolled his eyes. “Dido, you are far too unhappy about this whole thing!”

            “I’m only being realistic, _domine, ” _she said, with a sarcastic bow of her head, and Laevinus scoffed.

            “Anyway, Piso,” he chattered as they walked, “shouldn’t you be with Celatus? I hear he’s been snooping around some senatorial houses, on some new big case. Where are you in all that?” His grin turned sloped and cheeky. “Or is it your role to distract me while he makes some mischief I’m meant to stop?”

            Vannus’ tongue probed at his back teeth, and his pursed his lips. Laevinus immediately turned penitent.

            “Oh, Juno, I’m sorry,” he winced. “Er – things not… going well, then, between you two?”

            “It’s fine,” Vannus murmured, “we’re fine. I’m just – not taking part this time.”

            Laevinus frowned at him, and his unadulterated concern was gratifying.

            “Really, Laevinus,” Vannus chuckled, “it’s fine. The case is… not for me.” He tried a smile, but Laevinus seemed unconvinced.

            “Well,” he muttered, “if you say so…”

            Vannus took a long breath, and schooled his face. “So,” he said – “how’s business?”

            They continued on chatting aimlessly as they made their way towards the capitol: of Celatus’ revelation of a merchant’s missing cousin, and the legion of Nero’s old marines who had gone out to greet Galba. Laevinus’ wife was again pregnant, and the politics of the city seemed soon to calm; and though Dido continued to sigh and frown, she joined in the talk nonetheless, and seemed pleased about their capture, the week before, of a dangerous burglar.

            As they approached the forum, however, there was upheaval in their path. Though most of the crowd still pressed on its way towards the gates, there was a part of it that rebelled, a few scattered people who pushed and ran back, and shouted as they went. Vannus and Laevinus both frowned, and their hands went to their belts, though only Laevinus was carrying a weapon; and Dido stepped forward to walk in line with them, with one hand coming to rest on Laevinus’ arm.

            “Vannus!”

            He came out of nowhere – Celatus, without his usual toga, and with his hair in disarray, running towards them from a side alley. He grabbed Vannus’ arm and had already turned him partway around before he warned them all:

            “Run. Go. _Don’t_ go after the emperor!”

            “Ce- _latus!”_ Vannus tore his arm from Celatus’ grip and stepped away from him, glaring. When he spoke, it was with an unintentional note of accusation. “What is it, what’s happened?”

            “Nero’s marines,” Celatus panted – “they’re being massacred as we speak.”

            Laevinus’ eyes went wide, and he drew his sword completely, though Dido now gripped his arm with a fist. Celatus glanced at the movement.

            “No,” he snapped, “no, don’t. There’s nothing to be done. They say he tried to decimate them, and when they broke ranks, he let his soldiers run loose – you _must_ go back, get away from the capitol!”

            “If people are in danger –” Laevinus began, but Celatus shook his head.

            “No, no one’s in danger, not like you think,” he said. “But everyone returning has said that it’s bloodlust and death beyond the Campus Martius, there’s nothing to be _done.”_ He looked as if the very idea harrowed him to his bones. Vannus remembered his impatience when they’d locked themselves away during Nero’s downfall, and wondered at what a difference a few months and a real massacre had made. At that moment, a soldier ran past them with no weapon or shield, fear in his eyes and blood spattered along his right arm. The crowd heaved as he passed, and murmurs followed in the wake of his screams.

            “Did you see it?” Vannus found himself asking. Celatus’ stare darted back to him.

            “What?”

            “Did you _see_ the killing?”

            Celatus’ nose wrinkled with his frown. “No, of course not, I haven’t left the walls,” he babbled, “but the talk is all the same, and the evidence clear enough on those coming back!” He threw out an arm in the direction of the soldier’s retreating back.

            Vannus felt his shoulders sag with an unfamiliar sense of relief. _“ Age,” _he said, with a nod the street behind them, “let’s get back. Already the crowd is pushing towards us.”

            Indeed, the people around them had shifted in tone, and what before had been a general movement outward had gradually become a push back into the city as they spoke.

            “Laevinus, your family –” Vannus began, but the legate was already nodding sternly, and he stepped back as he sheathed his sword.

            “Us vigiles should be all right,” he said, like an order. “But I need to go back to my men and my household.”

 _“Go,”_ Celatus urged. “We’ll be safe.”

            Laevinus nodded to them both, and departed, with Dido in tow, after she shook Vannus’ hand with very direct glance and ran off. Vannus turned his gaze up to Celatus.

            “We need to warn Menna,” he said.

            “And Seia,” Celatus added, without preamble. “I’ll stop by at Statius’ on the way. Are there any more you’ll warn?”

            “A few old friends.” Vannus nodded. “I’ll see you at the via Pistoris, yes? Let Hirtia know.”

            “Yes,” Celatus promised, with an answering nod, and a steady breath. “Keep yourself safe.” He stepped back, towards the twisting maze of alleys from which he’d emerged, and added, before he disappeared: “And delay no more than you must!”

 

            They reconvened within a matter of hours, back in CCXXIB, while the streets below them calmed and resumed their business, and their new emperor, presumably, took up his residence on the Palatine hill with blood already on his hands.

            “This is no mere political assassination,” Celatus growled, as he paced their quarters with twitching hands. “To murder unarmed men for being too willing to fight for you –” He cut himself off with a growl. Vannus, from where he sat with chin on his hand and his legs crossed, hummed.

            “Is that why he killed them, then?”

            “Or so the most prevalent rumours say,” Celatus scoffed, and turned on his heel as he reached the wall, behind Vannus’ chair. “Tried to disband them, they pleaded their honour, and he _massacred them._ What kind of leader does that?”

            “Welcome to the grand world of soldiery, Celatus,” Vannus shrugged. “He was, technically speaking, within his rights.”

            “Within his _rights?!”_ Celatus shouted, with arms flailing. “Decimations are one thing, and rare at that – you never witnessed one, did you? Not in ten years with the legions!”

            “No, of course I didn’t.”

            “You _see?”_

            “But my experience doesn’t cover the _entire military world,_ you know.”

            Celatus grunted aloud, and tugged at his own hair, and Vannus idly watched as his pale fingers buried themselves in his dark and roiling hair.

            “Well then what _use_ are you?” Celatus suddenly snapped, as he swirled on his feet around his own chair and back across the room. Vannus frowned, and finally focused his gaze on his friend.

            “You just asked my opinion,” he countered. “Surely –”

            “Clearly I miscalculated!” Celatus sneered, and though Vannus wanted to defend himself, there was something too fragile in Celatus’ anger to take it as heartfelt.

            “Celatus,” Vannus said, but the man ignored him in favour of pacing. He closed his eyes, and tried again. _“Celatus –”_

            He scraped to a halt in the middle of the room and shouted, “Oh just _leave me alone_ you insufferable –”

            Vannus watched as the words stopped short, even as Celatus’ mouth hung open, twisted and cruel, and then closed around the empty air, defiantly wrathful. Vannus’ brow rose – then he tucked in his chin and pulled away his gaze, and cleared his throat as he looked forward and stood. At his sides, his fingers uncurled and curled into fists.

            “Well then –”

            “The Bruttii will flee to Stabiae tonight.”

            The pronouncement was made with haste, words spilling, as Celatus glared at the floor.

            “They have a villa there, Galba’s made very clear his attitude to Neronians, if they leave the city and Epidia can’t get her payment to Minicianus by the ides –” He took a sharp breath, held it for a moment, then sighed it away. When he spoke again, it was with his face downturned but his eyes held up to Vannus like a submission.

            “Why won’t you help me on this case?”

            Though Vannus before had watched him over his shoulder, he now turned his head away, and let out a breath through his nose. With great effort, his hands relaxed at his sides.

            “You heard Minicianus’ threat,” he said, barely more than a murmur. “I won’t risk the dishonour.”

            “Vannus, _please –”_

            “I _won’t. Risk it.”_

            “Vannus –” Celatus seemed to fall forward on heavy feet, and stumbled to a rest a few steps closer, even as Vannus flinched back – though at least he now faced his foe. “I cannot do this on my own,” Celatus insisted in a whisper, through gritted teeth. “I am _out of my depth,_ do you hear? _Quid a— quid agam nescio. ”_

            Vannus’ face was stern, his lips thin, and his shoulders firm.

            “I’m sorry Celatus,” he said. “He’s got the better of me, too.”

 

            Celatus left the next day – took one of his brother’s horses and rode out from the city – for Stabiae. As he recounted when he returned two days before the ides, he caught up with the Bruttii on the road, and managed to get a few private words with Epidia – who supposed, with utter fear, that her next payment to Minicianus would be impossible, due to their distance from Rome and Crispinus’ heightened alertness.

            “Wouldn’t stop _harping on_ about her daughters,” Celatus complained to Vannus in CCXXIB; but his friend could see there was little ire in his eyes beyond that for Crispinus and Minicianus themselves.

            “So what will you do?” Vannus asked from across a plate of roasted meat, where he sat both eating and weaving a flower garland for Fontinalia the next day.

            Celatus merely grunted, and tapped his fingers on the tabletop, his refusal to eat on silent display. His eyes caught on Vannus’ working fingers.

            “What are you _doing_ that for?” he snapped. “Surely the devotion of the better half of the city will keep Fons in check, don’t you have something _better_ to distract me with?”

            Vannus smiled thinly down at his work.

            “Perhaps _the better half of the city_ is reassurance enough for you,” he drawled in imitation of Celatus’ tone, “but just wait till you’re on campaign in a desert and your water supply runs out. Then we’ll see how unwilling you are to garnish a well-head when the festival comes.”

            Celatus’ mouth turned sour, and he picked up a knife and prodded the meat on the plate with dull eyes. “It’s October Horse in two days,” he said. “Will you be going up to watch the race?”

            Vannus shrugged, with both shoulder and mouth. “Probably,” he said, then arched one brow up at Celatus. “Why?”

            Celatus chewed on a morsel of mutton, and feigned innocence.

            “No reason,” he mused. “No reason at all.”

 

            In the end, Celatus did not show his face for Fontinalia, nor even throughout the whole of that day. The day before the ides, he stayed in his room until late in the morning, and only emerged when Hirtia knocked on his door and all but ordered him to come out and eat some porridge before it went cold a second time. He ate three bites, then disappeared until sundown, when he walked into the humid courtyard on careful feet even as Vannus scrubbed with all the strength and hastiness of a former soldier at the kitchen table he’d brought down.

            “Ides tomorrow,” he grunted as he scrubbed.

            “Enjoy the sacrifice,” Celatus replied, not looking at him. Vannus scowled, and stood back to wipe his brow on his arm and pick up a bucket of water.

            “That’s not what I was talking about,” he muttered as he washed off the tabletop, “and you know it.”

            “I know a way to help Epidia,” Celatus replied, in the same distant voice, “but I doubt you will like it.”

            “I don’t _have_ to like it,” Vannus said. “I’m not helping, remember?”

            Celatus screwed up his nose, and growled: _“Vividly.”_

            Vannus tossed another wave of fresh water over the table he was scrubbing, and glanced up at Celatus when he neither moved nor elaborated.

            “Well?” he prompted. “Are you going to show off to me or not?”

            “Not here,” said Celatus. “Come upstairs when you’re done.”

            He swept off into the building. After a moment alone, Vannus glanced down at the sopping tabletop; then cursed, tossed down bucket and brush, and hurried after his friend.

            “All right,” he snapped as he marched into their rooms, “what is it you have planned?”

            Celatus was just emerging from his room with a wooden chest in his arms, which he set upon the living room table before he announced:

            “I’m going to burgle Minicianus’ house.”

            Vannus opened his mouth, and held it there for a moment, before he frowned, and finally spoke.

            “No.”

            Celatus curled his lip at him. “It is not a matter for discussion,” he spat. “I’ve gone over every minute possibility, but this is how it stands: the only way to rid Epidia of this threat, is to _get rid of the threat altogether._ You’ve seen yourself how obstinate Minicianus can be, what… tools he uses to make people agree to his way. The only way to stop him from hounding Epidia is to remove his ability to blackmail her. After the ides, and after she is safe – then we can investigate how to ruin his foul business once and for all.”

            He fell to perusal of the box he’d brought out, opening it, and Vannus slowly approached, to sit at one of the stools by the table. He cleared his throat, and licked at his lips.

            “What’s your plan?” he asked, gently.

            “I can scale the outer wall of his house easily enough,” Celatus babbled, “the bricks there have enough pockmarks to hold. Bare feet for less sound, I’ll enter via the peristyle; Minicianus himself will be out late attending a feast before the festival tomorrow, and the rest of the household will be abed by the ninth hour. His study has two doors, one to the atrium and one to the peristyle: the first bolts from the inside, but the latter bolts only from without. Once inside, I’ll find where he hides his documents – I know he keeps them in that room, only where _precisely_ is a mystery – and take Epidia’s letters alone. Then it’s only a matter of climbing back out through the peristyle, or, at worst, slipping out of the servants’ entrance unseen.”

            “There will be guards,” Vannus warned, but Celatus shrugged him off, even as his fingers toyed seemingly without aim at the contents of the chest which Vannus could not see.

            “I can remove them from the equation with a blow or a bribe.”

            Vannus watched, as Celatus’ fiddling slowed until he stood still across the table, staring down at the chest and merely breathing. Vannus blinked.

            “All right then,” he said, and cleared his throat again. “When do we start?”

            Celatus startled, and frowned down at him. “You’re not coming,” he said.

            “Then you’re not going,” Vannus said with a nod. Across from him, Celatus narrowed his eyes, and shut the chest between them.

            “I thought you weren’t a part of this investigation anymore,” he sneered in accusation. Vannus pursed his lips and settled his shoulders with a breath.

            “Minicianus threatened me,” he said, as plain as he could. “You cannot blame me for being reticent.”

            “What changed, then?” Celatus asked – still in a tone that spoke more in anger and blame than curiosity. “Why do you suddenly feel the need to be involved?”

            “Well, you’re going to do something incredibly dangerous,” Vannus shrugged. “Usually that means you’ll need me around.”

            Celatus’ mouth soured. “I don’t _need_ you around just because I’ll be breaking the law!”

            Vannus pinned him with a very pointed look, and he capitulated, and changed tack.

            “Well then, what if Minicianus does what you fear?” He said it as he might have spat out a thorn. “What if he reveals whatever _secret_ he threatened you with?”

            There was a moment in which Vannus hesitated – fixed his gaze on Celatus’ bright, grey eyes and searched, though for what, neither man could be sure. In a moment, however, he seemed to have found what he wanted, and he sighed out his held breath in a long and measured rush.

            “Damage control would be easy enough,” he said with a shrug of one shoulder. “What he knows is not documented, and would only spread by word of mouth. There aren’t all that many people who would care enough for it to affect me.”

            “No doubt I would hear it though,” Celatus countered. “Menna, Laevinus, Seia, they would know. What then?”

            “Menna’s practical,” said Vannus. “Seia couldn’t care less.”

            Celatus would not break their held gaze. “And Laevinus?”

            Vannus’ mouth pursed by a fraction. “Hopefully he would not let it affect his judgement,” he said, unwavering. “As I said, there aren’t many people whose opinion it would affect enough for me to worry, should word get out.”

            “So it’s a matter of _my_ knowing.”

            At the pronouncement, Vannus glanced down to the table. A more obvious admission Celatus could not have wanted, and there was suppressed triumph in his smile.

            “What would you not want _me_ to know?” he breathed, in the same voice he chose for fascinating corpses, and sat across the table from Vannus, pushing the chest out of his line of sight. “Me, more than any other of your associates?”

            Vannus said nothing, but Celatus could see where he was compulsively biting his tongue within his mouth, behind those pursed and tightened lips. He changed tack.

            “All right then,” he said, all business, “what will you do if Minicianus reveals your secret to me? If the possibility does not stop you from coming.”

            “Minicianus will not reveal anything to you,” said Vannus slowly, “because – I’m going to tell you first.”

            He stared at his hands, clasped upon the tabletop, for a moment longer, then glanced up at Celatus with his brow raised. Celatus, however, merely stared in answer, blank and unmoving, so Vannus dropped his gaze back down; though he could not leave it low for long. He glanced here and there, only occasionally meeting Celatus’ staring eyes, as he spoke.

            “Do you consent?” he asked. “Will you, uh – hear me; without reproach?”

            After a short eternity, Celatus opened his mouth, though no sound came out. Another few moments passed, as Vannus’ glances slowed, before Celatus spoke.

            “I –” he tried, but his voice broke. He blinked, and began again, with a whisper as of wonder. “I… would be _honoured._ Vannus. If you should…” He cleared his throat, and blinked three times in rapid succession. “Trust me, with such a…”

            Vannus nodded as he trailed away, and again he looked down to where his hands were white-knuckled in each other. He separated them, set his palms on the edge of the wood, and said:

            “I can’t read.”

            He did not look up at Celatus, nor did he allow him time enough to speak.

            “That’s the reason I was discharged,” he continued, nodding through the words, “that’s the reason I was refused the benefits of a veteran.”

            He took a long breath. Celatus, however, did not interrupt; so Vannus released a sigh which pulled down his shoulders and set his elbows again onto the table and his hands to twisting between them.

            “I can read numbers well enough,” he clarified, “and I can – sign my own name. Recognise a few words. You know. But –” Another breath. “I cannot read or write.” He stopped again, in the clear expectation that Celatus would speak, but the man had grown numb and silent in his chair. Vannus still did not look at him. “When I was injured, they wanted to promote me. This was before the fever set in. No more fighting, and I would still be a surgeon – but more teaching and administration than before. Since they knew me to be illiterate, they decided they would keep me on and teach me as I went – at a price. A price I could not pay.”

            “They asked for a bribe.”

            Celatus’ words were unemotional, observational, flat. Vannus closed his eyes for just a moment.

            “A soldier’s pay is good,” he said, “but not that good. Not for me, who’d been sending salaries home to my parents and sister until the day they died, who grew up too poor to know when one’s savings could be spent. They sent me home in disgrace.”

            There was a clicking _tut_ as Celatus opened his mouth. “Surely that isn’t so –” he began, but Vannus cut him off.

            “They made me _walk,”_ he growled. “The fever arrived the day before, and they made me walk, half-delirious, through my cohort.”

            “I _talked_ to your soldiers,” said Celatus with quiet disbelief, “remember? They said you were –”

            Vannus slammed his palms upon the table. “They _humiliated_ me, Celatus!” he roared, as he finally looked up to meet his friend’s dull stare with his own dark and flashing shame. “They used my failures to try to extort from me, then threw me aside as worthless, and made me stagger through men I’d thought were my equals! I came to this city in absolute dishonour, do you understand that?”

            Celatus had blanched before him. He swallowed. “You took an arrow – for the empire…” he tried to say, but his voice failed him. He stared at Vannus’ twisted expression. “You _fought_ for us,” he said. “You nearly _died.”_

            “I _should_ have died,” Vannus snapped to his hands.

            It was the final straw.

            Celatus pushed himself from his chair and stood with a harsh, sharp movement. Vannus, startled, glanced up, and saw his friend’s eyes flash silver in the gathering night.

            “You deserve,” Celatus growled, fists trembling at his sides, “a crown of _oak._ You deserve the highest honours that wretched legion could give to you, do you hear me?”

            “Celatus,” Vannus muttered, “your defence is gratifying, but –”

 _“Marcus Caelius Piso Vannus,”_ Celatus cried, “do you _hear_ me? You are the bravest, strongest, most honourable man that I have ever known! If your legion threw you out, it was to _their_ detriment, not yours!”

            Vannus stared up at him, until Celatus’ fierce stance faltered – and then a hiccuping laugh tumbled from his lips. He glanced to the table, and shook his head, and laughed almost silently as Celatus looked on with wide and bewildered eyes.

            “Well then,” Vannus finally sighed – “I suppose I had nothing to fear in the first place, did I?”

            He looked up at Celatus, and there was a wide, bright grin on his face, as he said once more:

            “When do we start?”

 

            They waited until an hour after dark. By then, rain had begun to fall, fat, heavy droplets that told either of an impending storm, or a continuing, unbearable humidity. They went without shoes, and Celatus slipped denarii into hidden pockets within his belt, while Vannus strapped on his dagger and tied a sling alongside it. Their route to Minicianus’ house was winding and circuitous, and – as few torches were lit in the rain – barely moonlit and dark with shadows, so that they darted with the fear of thieves and assassins in their hearts.

            They met no one, however, on the streets, and found their way to the high, sheer walls of Minicianus’ house with ease. As Vannus peered up at it, he could see the advantages of which Celatus had spoken: graffiti and peeled paint were dotted here and there, but more than anything, the business of hundreds of people as they passed through the narrow alley had worn and chipped at the plaster, until there were veritable foot- and handholds between the bricks. Celatus bent down to put his mouth by Vannus’ ear.

            “I’ll admit, I made some of them myself,” he murmured, “but it was not an extensive job. Minicianus may take great pains to protect his front door, but the servants’ alley is somewhat less of a concern.”

            Vannus scanned the space above them.

            “Could you give me a boost to that windowsill?”

            Celatus glanced up, and said, “Oh. Even better,” with eyes that shimmered even without the light of the stars. He bent down, and Vannus planted his foot in the patrician’s hands, and was lifted up to the level of a ground-floor window high up in the wall. He gripped the sill, and heaved himself up, and reached out for the first handhold as his toes pressed against the plaster. He pulled himself high enough to lift his foot to the windowsill, and pushed up towards the two-storey-high roof.

 _“ Age,” _he whispered to Celatus below, and continued on. Celatus jumped for the sill, and began the precipitous climb up. His longer limbs, however, gave him an advantage, and he reached the inward-sloping roof at the same time as Vannus did. They clambered over the edge together, each resting his feet with utter gentleness upon the tiles, lest they loosen one and send it to shatter on the ground and wake the household. The roof they were on sloped gently down over the first-floor rooms, then dropped away to allow window access to the peristyle over another walkway roof. When they had settled, Celatus reached out with one hand and rested just the tips of his fingers on Vannus’ arm to get his attention. Vannus heeded him, and edged closer.

            “There are two slaves who stand watch over the peristyle,” Celatus breathed, making as little sound as possible. Vannus followed his nod, and craned his neck to peer down over the lower roof and into the courtyard below, where two men in shadows sat with their heads together in low conversation on a bench between two pillars across from them. Vannus shifted back, and made a silent gesture towards the sling behind his hip; Celatus nodded, and crouched low and steady on the tiles.

            With every effort to make no noise, Vannus inched forward to the edge of the upper roof, and slipped his sling from his belt. There were enough pebbles and rubbish caught in the tiles around them that he did not have to work hard for ammunition; and with two hefty little stones in hand, he braced one foot on the very edge of the roof, and carefully shifted his weight in counterbalance to his strain and its inevitable release. He took aim, and swung his weapon, and waited for the slight breeze to die down.

            With one shot, the guard on the left looked shocked, then dazed, then he let out a low, quiet groan and slid forward off the bench, unconscious. The man beside him had hardly time to open his mouth to call to his fellow, before he too had been dispatched, and joined the other man, unconscious, on the courtyard floor.

            Vannus beckoned to Celatus behind him as he tucked away his sling, then checked that he wasn’t in front of any windows and dropped down to the roof below. Celatus snuck forward on long legs behind him, and did the same, and within moments, they were both crouched in the peristyle, silently praying – or at least, Vannus was – that they had gone unseen.

            A moment passed, and then another, but nothing moved save for their lungs, and the leaves of plants under the occasional drop of rain.

            Celatus rose like a wave, and tugged at Vannus’ tunic as he slipped on silent feet towards the portico on his left, at the front edge of the yard. Vannus – a little less gracefully – followed. As Celatus had foretold, the back door to the study was bolted from the outside, and though the metal creaked and tried to clatter, Celatus gradually prised it open; and as he did, Vannus took the opportunity to check on the guards he’d knocked out. He hurried to follow Celatus into the study when he had the door open, and, as they stood just inside and let their eyes grow accustomed to the dark, he leaned up and rested his palm on Celatus’ shoulder, and breathed in his ear.

            “They won’t be unconscious all night,” he hushed. “You should make it quick.”

            Celatus stayed still and silent for a moment; then he caught Vannus’ eye in the dark, and nodded. He motioned with one hand – _‘wait here’_ – and slipped away into the dark.

            As Vannus watched, his sight improved, and he could see, even as he pricked his ears for any sound from without, Celatus run his hands over the smooth desk in the middle of the room, and the cabinets and shelves, even the lararium, along the walls. He found nothing, however, as their time slipped by, and his movements became increasingly twitchy and rushed as his frustration grew. Finally, he straightened, from having examined the floor, and let out the loudest sound that was safe: a rush of breath through his nose, in part a sigh, and in part a silent growl. Yet even as he stood there, and glared at nothing, his back and neck went stiff – and he turned his head to the wall on his right.

            His long legs took him three strides, past Vannus, and out into the peristyle with swiftness and ease; and then he returned, with a triumphant grin which glowed, along with his pale eyes, in the dark. He gripped Vannus’ right shoulder, and leaned around him to put his mouth by his ear.

            “The space in here is just slightly shorter than the walls outside would have it appear,” he hissed, and squeezed Vannus’ shoulder as he retreated, still grinning. Vannus’ eyes went wide, but instead of smiling, he merely pushed Celatus further into the room in a silent and obvious command: _‘Hurry up!’_

            Celatus tripped over to the side of the room with the force of Vannus’ shove, and immediately set his hands to work. He ran his fingers over every crack and crevice in the excellently plastered wall, and peered close enough to nearly touch his nose to the paintings, the details of which could not be made out in the dark. Then – very suddenly – his fingertips caught. There, in quite the centre of the wall, and concealed by the shadows and frames of the painting, a wide panel – plaster on wood – pulled out, and revealed a dark compartment in the space between the walls. Celatus froze in place, with the panel in his hands, and Vannus could have sworn that they both held their breaths as one; then, like the breaking of an enchantment, Celatus moved again, and the world ran on.

            He set the panel on the floor, leaning against the wall, and reached into the hollow space behind to pull out a broad, deep box of solid brass. He reached for the latch, and smiled with relief – at the same moment in which a door scraped open within the house, and Vannus glanced back through the open door to see the light of a lamp being lit in one of the upper-storey rooms around the peristyle. Celatus froze at the noise, and Vannus stiffened and drew back at the light, and hissed, _“Celatus!_ There’s someone awake!”

            Without sparing a moment, Celatus sprang up and replaced the panel in the wall, then swept to where Vannus stood to see the light wavering in the shuttered window above.

            “The bodies,” he muttered in Vannus’ ear, and Vannus’ shoulders dropped down even as his jaw went tight and he whispered: “Mithras and Mars…”

            They glanced once more at the light – which now began to move between the windows – and, in a near-panic, hurried to their work.

            Celatus slipped out first, and crouched low to run to the bodies, still slumped by the bench; behind him, Vannus shut the door after them and followed. Together, they heaved and rolled the unconscious slaves – who let out a groan or two which nearly spooked the two men into flight – into the length of bushes along that side of the garden, and covered them up hastily with leaves and overhanging branches, as best they could, in the hope that the lingering shadows would be enough to hide them. Then, as the lamplight grew muted, and descended a set of stairs, Celatus and Vannus leapt across the peristyle and into the row of bushes opposite the unconscious men. They lay almost on top of each other, with Celatus on his side and nearly buried under plantlife as Vannus flattened his back to the cold soil, his feet pointed away from Celatus but his aim having been hurried enough to cross them over, so that his head was by Celatus’ chest. A raindrop fell on Vannus’ cheek.

            The lamplight reached the courtyard, and bloomed outward, weak, but brighter by far than the clouded-over moon. Celatus’ back was to the central pathway, and Vannus’ view was obscured by his friend; but the oily voice of Minicianus was unmistakeable as it called out, comfortably and obscenely loud, in the night.

            “Tiro!” he shouted. “Atticus! Oh, these wretched slaves, can’t they do one thing right…”

            Clearly, he had not gone to the feast.

            The lamplight moved on again, accompanied by the soft sounds of Minicianus’ footsteps, towards the study door; which Vannus saw, as he craned his neck, _he had left unbolted._ His left hand, bent up and squashed between his side and Celatus, darted out to grip the front of Celatus’ tunic in alarm – Celatus flinched, and his own hand shot up to grip him back, though for what, he did not yet know – when, as Vannus watched, Minicianus came to the study door, and reached out for the handle; and his thick, short fingers stopped before the bolt in surprise.

            Vannus held his breath, and Celatus stared, and watched his fear.

            “Wretched _slaves,”_ Minicianus repeated, and pulled open the door, and the lamplight disappeared into the room.

            Vannus deflated and nearly cursed with relief, and Celatus frowned down at him, their joined hands now resting upon Vannus’ breast.

            “The bolt,” Vannus whispered, as quietly as he could, despite the door having been nearly shut behind Minicianus. Celatus’ eyes widened in realisation, and he craned his neck to see, even though the danger had passed. Vannus relaxed his hand, but did not release his friend; merely pressed his hand atop Celatus’ so that the warmth of the patrician’s palm seeped through the front of his tunic, even as the rain picked up and drops began to fall a fraction more steadily upon their supine forms.

            “Your heart is racing,” Celatus observed near-silently, though his eyes were elsewhere. He removed his hand from Vannus’ so that he could lean down, the arm now resting on the soil above his friend’s head.

            “If we’re caught?” Vannus rasped. “What then?”

            “Minicianus will surely prosecute,” Celatus breathed – “if he doesn’t simply kill us on sight and plead the Twelve Tables.”

            Vannus tried to silence and steady his breath. “We could run,” he whispered. “Flee now, while he’s distracted.”

            “No!” Celatus hissed. “We still need to obtain Epidia’s letters.”

            Vannus took another breath, and this one shook a little less than before. He sighed it out, and settled in to the sod below him. Above, through the gap in the roof, the clouds roiled and hung, dark and grey, and dropped heavy pellets of rain on his face through the leaves. Beside him, Celatus lowered himself a little further, and his hand settled by Vannus’ shoulder, as he now rested half-propped on his elbow. Vannus laid both hands on his own chest.

            And so they waited.

            The fear and suspense were enough to keep them well awake – but they did not know what Minicianus was doing at such an hour, holed away in his study by the light of a lonely lamp. They lay there, growing steadily more damp from the rain and soil; until, after what felt like an interminable age, they heard a stirring at the front of the house: muffled voices, and a heavy door being opened and shut. Celatus stilled, and raised himself on his elbow, and Vannus lifted his hands to hover, steady, in the air. Light footsteps approached through the atrium, and a knock sounded on the other side of Minicianus’ study. The chair scraped, the bolt opened with a _crack,_ and the outer door was opened. Through where the back door to the study had been left just ajar, Celatus and Vannus heard all.

            “Ah,” came Minicianus’ smooth and sordid voice, with unending impatience _._ “You’re late.”

            They heard the door close behind the visitor, followed by the creak of Minicianus resuming his seat.

            “So,” he drawled, loud and confident enough to drift out into the peristyle still. “I hear you’ve come into possession of some… important documents.”

            Something moved within the room, but the sound was not clear enough to be deciphered. Celatus pushed himself higher on his arm, even as Vannus shifted up onto his elbows, and they both watched the peristyle door, until Minicianus’ voice oozed back into hearing.

            “I know my fellow senators can be intimidating, but you’ve made it this far,” he was saying. “Don’t you think you ought to hand it over? There’s a pretty price in it for you if you do – enough, perhaps, to even buy your freedom…”

            Jupiter growled far above them, and Vannus caught Celatus’ gaze beside him, and lowered his voice to a whisper even as the thunder rolled away.

            “We shouldn’t be here.”

            Celatus glared at him, then pushed away. They both rolled out from under the branches and leaves, which danced under raindrops, and crouched over to creep towards the study. Just without the door, they could hear the two voices within.

            “You know why I’m here,” said a woman’s voice – but it was stern and cold, and Minicianus’ chair scraped out and clattered to the floor. Vannus met Celatus’ eye around the door and, as the closer of the two, pushed at it just enough to peer inside. Within, Minicianus’ broad back, in full toga, was quaking with mortal terror; for, across the table from him, stood a tall, dark, emaciated young woman with a short, broad sword in her hand and a veil, tossed from her head, about her shoulders.

            “Now, little dear,” Minicianus said, with a fearful laugh – “let’s not do anything rash.”

            “Rash?” the woman repeated, with a raised brow. “I have nothing left to lose, no action for me is _rash.”_

            Even though Minicianus’ back was turned, Vannus felt he could still see the simpering sneer.

            “Nothing left at all?” he cooed. “Why, surely you’ve _something –”_

            “You _killed my father.”_

            Minicianus shrugged, and stepped around the corner of the table. “I killed no one at all, young lady,” he said. “Or – sorry, you’re not worthy of such a civilised title anymore, are you?”

            “You _exposed_ him!” the woman growled, and brandished her sword towards Minicianus’ advancing chest. “You broke his poor heart until his suicide, you tore all my family had from them! My mother had to sell me into slavery to survive!”

            Vannus watched as the edges of Minicianus’ mouth turned down, and he spread his thick hands in mock sympathy.

            “Merely the inconveniences of Fortuna, I’m afraid.”

            All of a sudden, however, the woman darted forward, and gripped the front of Minicianus’ tunic with her left hand. The point of her sword was just above Minicianus’ breastbone, and her expression breathed utter hate. Vannus stiffened and nearly gasped – which Celatus saw, and immediately tried to dart forward to see; but Vannus held out his hand as an impediment, and kept his friend back.

            “You ruined us,” the young woman whispered. “You will not do so to anyone else.”

            Minicianus tried to laugh, but it was hollow and breathless. “You can’t hurt me,” he said, like an accusation. The woman’s lip curled.

            “You will not ply your foul trade any longer.”

            With the words spoken, she plunged the point of her sword into Minicianus’ breast. He twitched and groaned around the weapon, but even as his weak hands reached up to her shoulders, she withdrew the weapon and stabbed him again, and again, five times in all, through the man’s chest and throat. Vannus blinked, and nearly gasped to see the violence, but at the mortal sound of Minicianus’ pain, Celatus’ eyes grew wide, and he tore at the wood of the door and wrenched it open. He stood with Vannus in the doorway, and they watched as the woman, with bloody sword in hand, pressed her booted heel into Minicianus’ unmoving face. She looked up at them at the sound of the door, but Celatus, who took in the scene with one glance and knew all that Vannus had seen, said only one thing to her:

_“Go.”_

            She turned on her heel and sprinted away, wrenching the atrium door open and fleeing away and into the street, even as the guards on the front door frowned and questioned, but failed to stop her. Celatus stepped into the room and skirted Minicianus’ body, and called out to Vannus as he made for the panel in the wall.

            “Bolt the door, quickly!”

            Vannus obeyed, and saw, as he did, the guards outside turn away from the street and inwards to the rest of the house.

            “Celatus,” he muttered, as he turned back towards the room with the door secured – “they’re coming.”

            Celatus was hauling out the brass box from within the hidden space. He knelt before it on the floor, and glanced at Minicianus’ body, too close for comfort, as he lifted the lid.

            “Pass me the lamp,” he said, as he sifted through the papers and packets within, and Vannus retrieved Minicianus’ little oil lamp from where it had been left on the desk, and brought it over. As he did, Celatus drew out a small bundle of string-tied papyrus labelled ‘Epidia Bruttia’, and someone pounded on the atrium door and shouted for them to stop. Celatus glanced, panting, at the door, then held Epidia’s letters to the flame in Vannus’ hand.

            “Burn the rest of the documents,” he snapped, and overturned the brass box so that Minicianus’ blackmailing materials fell in a little pool across the floor. He held Epidia’s bundle so that they burned faster and with ease, and Vannus set to work lighting the treacherous documents in many places. The shouting on the other side of the door had grown louder, as had the beating on the wood, and there was no doubt that soon the whole household would be awake.

            “Celatus,” Vannus growled, and the patrician finally dropped the remaining, burning shreds of their goal, and grabbed Vannus’ hand as he stood. The lamp clattered to the floor and they fled to the peristyle door, even as the flames behind them spread and grew with a sigh, and movement sounded in some of the rooms above. Without words, Celatus bent down to give Vannus a boost onto the lower peristyle roof, then gripped Vannus’ proffered hands and was hauled up behind him. They ran without caution now, as the blazing fire in the study threw smoke toward the dark sky and light into the garden, and tiles slipped and crashed beneath their feet. More shouts rang out, and as Vannus climbed up to the second roof behind Celatus, he glanced back to see the two guards they’d knocked out rise up, dizzy but alert, and flee towards the servants’ entrance at the side of the house.

            Out on the street, nearby residents had begun to notice, and were talking and shouting, or coming out onto the street. Someone was calling for the vigiles, another for water, and, as the flames within grew high enough to be seen above the roof, no one paid heed to two furtive men clambering over the shadows.

            “Look!” Celatus suddenly cried, and gripped Vannus’ sleeve. He was pointing to the front of the house – where, inexplicably, another fire had appeared, its bright, burning fingers reaching out from the windows of one of the street-side rooms. Vannus gasped his confusion, but Celatus plucked at his tunic again, and they both forgot about the incongruous flames in favour of hanging on to the rain-dampened bricks of the outer wall.

            But as they fell to the mud-streaked alley, one voice rose high above the increasing din of fire, thunder and fear, and there was no mistaking its intent: someone had seen their escape.

 _“ Curre!” _Celatus immediately cried, and turned on tumbling feet away from the main street and the crowd. Vannus followed, but his legs were not as long, and their predator was quick, and within moments, Vannus was tackled to the ground.

            A clap of thunder sounded above, and drowned out Celatus’ scream.

            His attacker was carrying a knife, but Vannus dodged it and crawled away, enough to strike out with his fists and force the breath and the weapon from his foe. He kicked and lashed in the stranger’s weakness, then freed his legs and spun around, until he could grip the man’s head between his hands and beat it against the nearest wall: just once, so that his eyes closed and his fists went limp.

            No one else had followed the man, as Vulcan roared against Jupiter and the flames rose to the sky, and Vannus scrambled to his feet to find Celatus nearly upon him again.

            “What are you doing?” he panted, and pushed at the patrician’s chest. “Go, _go!”_

            Together, they ran, feet flying across the stones. Vannus followed where Celatus led, in a twisting, winding, inscrutable path, and the fire retreated further and further from their hearing and sight even as the sky finally opened, and what had once been an unsteady smattering of rain became a veritable downpour. They were soaked to the skin by the time they reached the via Pistoris, and hurried indoors, shivering and dripping, so that they could change their clothes and sling blankets around their shoulders, and hug themselves for warmth. Outside, the sky was still not yet light, and the rain fell fast and thick, and, somewhere far beyond their insula, a building threw smoke and fire towards the sky.

 

            They stoked the embers in the hearth into flames, and heated wine and water to drink. Still huddled each in their layers of clothes and blankets, they knelt before the fire and absorbed their fill of the heat, even as it seemed to sear their uncovered faces.

            “There were two fires,” Vannus murmured, as he grasped a cup of warm wine between both hands. _“Why?”_

            Celatus did not reply for a moment, but sipped at his own drink instead. He poked at one of the new logs on their growing fire. “Who else do we know,” he finally began, with slow and careful words, “who likes to light fires?” He glanced askance at Vannus’ frown. “Who do we know who’s an expert incendiary?”

            Vannus’ face fell, and he looked back to their burning hearth.

            “Mercurialis.”

            Celatus said nothing, but he too watched their own little flames. After a few moments of silence, interspersed only with the crackle and pop of falling firewood, Vannus spoke, quiet and careful.

            “I should have seen this coming,” he said. A crease appeared between Celatus’ brows, and he opened his mouth, but Vannus overrode him. “Last month, just before this all began – she threatened me. It must have been her.”

            Celatus’ whole body turned towards his friend. “She _threatened_ you?” he repeated, aghast. “What? When? _How?”_

            “Not like that,” Vannus sighed, “it’s nothing so bad as you’re thinking. We were in the cattle market, and someone – came up to me, taunted me about the arena, then disappeared again. I thought nothing of it at the time, we were busy, and it might just have been any bitter citizen. But now…”

            Celatus slumped out of his momentary fit of energy, and glared at the fire. “I wish you’d told me,” was all he said. Vannus stared into his wine-cup.

            “So we think it was her, then?” he said. “Mercurialis burned down Minicianus’ house just as we did the same.”

            “It’s not unlikely,” said Celatus.

            “But _why?”_

            Celatus shrugged. “Perhaps he got in her way,” he suggested. “Perhaps he was working for her and tried to betray her to someone. We don’t know.”

            Vannus looked over at him, and remained calm.

            “You intend to find out,” he said. “Don’t you?”

            Celatus did not answer; for it had not really been a question. Instead, he drained his cup, and glanced out at where the sky was going grey, and the rain was thin.

            “Good morning, Vannus,” he murmured as he pushed to his feet, and padded away into his room.

 

            They slept for a few meagre hours, and went to the chariot race together. Safe once more in Celatus’ room, his wooden chest lay hidden, filled with coins and jewels and rich lengths of silk and wool, and a will written on papyrus, recently changed.

**Author's Note:**

> I may have fudged the exact rites for the celebration at the beginning, but the Ides of September was indeed a feast day for Jupiter, as are the Fontinalia and October Horse celebrations.
> 
> Details on Galba's entry into Rome are a little hazy, but since the case is so specifically time-based (especially around the ides), I had to make up some specific dates for assassinations and massacres. Sorry about that.
> 
> The Twelve Tables (ancient written basis of public law) states that if anyone commits theft by night, and is caught and killed, it is legal homicide; therefore, Minicianus would be well in the (legal) right to kill Celatus and Vannus if he caught them burgling his home, as Celatus suggests.
> 
> As may have been obvious, this part was much more inspired by the original Doyle story than 'His Last Vow'. There may have been influences by my previous use of the story in updating it into the _Sherlock_ universe in _[Concertos and Blackmail](http://archiveofourown.org/works/662440/chapters/1208685)_. It was also influenced by an old theory I once read (I've long since forgotten where, I'm afraid) about the possible collusion or conflict between Moriarty and Milverton, and the impacts of these theories on canon chronology.


End file.
